Radical Normalisation
Published on 29. September 2022
104 pages
978-1-80017-240-1 (ISBN)
Description
Celia A Sorhaindo's engrossing debut, Radical Normalisation, writes back from the margins, bringing readers to her Dominican home. It adjusts perspectives on the universal questions about poetry as a resource and value in the present. Sorhaindo's wit and linguistic inventiveness are clear in her reflections on the art and the arts, her dramatization of the Dominica-born novelist Jean Rhys's voice, and her reflections on the natural world-a natural world different from others but continuous with them. She records its changes and reckons with it in a series of poems that respond to the destruction visited on Dominica, most recently by Hurricane Maria. Her writing led John Robert Lee to hail, 'a new voice that speaks with sensitivity, maturity and assurance out of a horrendous experience'.
Reviews / Votes
'Radical Normalisation is a tour-de-force of ars poetica. In running dialogue with herself and numerous other poets and writers, Sorhaindo repeatedly addresses poetry - and has poetry talk back. Whether focussed on survival after a hurricane or the line between 'madness' and 'unravelling,' Sorhaindo pushes, defines, and redefines the terms and stakes of 'this poem.' In sonically, imagistically, and formally explosive measure, she makes the 'normal' radical and frees it to sing in its chains.'Shara McCallum 'This fearless, eclectic debut harnesses the interrogative force of poetry, querying how we define a community, society, continent or memory, these poems subvert cliche and radically rethink our relationship with ordinary things and moments... The book reads like a tug of war, in which concentrated sonnet-like poems about the role of the poet and the public vie with meandering, experimental, prosy pieces exploring personal memory and ancestral wounds'
Kit Fan, The Guardian 'The poems are varied in form; they are visually and aurally energetic. They scour a great range of feelings and experiences. The reader is welcomed into Sorhaindo's physical and emotional orbits.'
Kay Syrad, ARTEMISpoetry 'An engaging and thought-provoking collection which will no doubt find its place in the canon of Caribbean poetry in English.'
Eric Doumerc, Miranda
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Carcanet Press Ltd
File size
0,54 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-80017-240-1 (9781800172401)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Celia A. Sorhaindo
Radical Normalisation
Book
09/2022
Carcanet Press Ltd
€18.50
Shipment within 3-4 weeks
Person
Celia A Sorhaindo was born in the Commonwealth of Dominica. She migrated with her family to England in 1976, when she was eight years old, returning home in 2005. Her poems have been published in Verse Daily, Illuminations International Magazine, Rattle, Mslexia, Wasafiri, Anomaly, Magma Poetry, Lolwe, New Daughters of Africa Anthology, and Caribbean journals PREE, The Caribbean Writer, BIM, Moko Magazine and Susumba's Book Bag. She is co-compiler of Home Again: Stories of Migration and Return, published by Papillote Press and her first poetry chapbook, Guabancex, longlisted for the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, was published in February 2020, also by Papillote Press. Celia is a Cropper Foundation Creative Writers Workshop fellow and a Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop fellow.
